Our Generation is a frank, fond tribute to the agony and ecstasy of generation Snapchat

The hope and anxiety, the immaturity and precocious wisdom, plus the hormonal agony and ecstasy of today’s teens is entertainingly and stirringly on view in Our Generation.

This is the latest from verbatim theatre queen Alecky Blythe, returning to the National for the first time since 2011’s London Road, a musical about the Ipswich serial murders forged from local colloquial utterance that felt like a real departure.

Blythe, an actress turned playwright, boldly marshals interviews with “ordinary” people into dramatically coherent vehicles of popular expression, requiring casts to replicate the speech of interviewees with forensic fidelity. This piece, co-presented by the National and Chichester, with the latter’s artistic director Daniel Evans taking the directorial reins, goes head to head, in a way, with one of the landmark TV experiments of modern times: the post-war Up series – as well as its successor Up New Generation, following the millennials. Our Generation tracks 12 teenagers from six parts of the UK over five years.

What can theatre do that telly can’t when it comes to Generation Z? The form creates a conceptual distance – Blythe’s diverse, fresh-faced dozen are inhabited by relatively older actors. When the acting is as good as it is here the result is a thrilling suspension of disbelief; we’re aware of the artifice but also experience it as authentic. You also get the atmospheric embodiment of youth itself – teenage years incline to monotony, but they also abound with physicality, and that’s honoured with a scampering playfulness on the thrust-stage.

The research process was so extensive it required delegating to five other “collectors”, with Blythe doing the honours in the capital. She ended up with 600 hours of recorded testimony, shaping that into three acts of 254 scenelets – coming in at a mighty running-time of 3 hours 40 mins (with intervals).

The raw material must have seemed as daunting as adolescence itself. Blythe’s project initially lacked an obvious focal event. But, as it turned out, Covid-19 gave the participants a shared shell-shock, one that dominates the final act, and brings home how disruptive and mentally fraying the pandemic has been for the exam-sitters of recent years.

However, even in the sections without a binding thread, the piece – at its more diffuse, reiterative and scattershot – still fascinates, depicting self-sufficiency hatching from childhood’s cocoon, amid the trials of school, the pressures of social media, and pushy – and sometimes downright unpleasant – parenting.

There’s always the fear of Blythe editorialising the vulnerable for our entertainment and easy judgement. At first, that’s a worry, as the ensemble confidingly babble their thoughts. But as each personality becomes more distinct, along with their differing social circumstances, some tough, our appreciation emerges in sync with their own dawning self-awareness.

It’s hard to do justice to them all, but Blythe was clearly blessed in chancing on a charismatic British Kosovan lad called Luan (Helder Fernandes), a slouch at school who dreams of basketball success, and responds to parental nagging at his poor mock GCSE results with the immortal words: “It’s not that deep.”

Among the other gems are every word spoken by Cambridgeshire private school-boy Lucas (a spot-on, likely stellar Joe Bolland), giggling into relationships with the opposite sex but more fragile than he appears. The line of the night belongs to Welsh bad-girl Mia (Sarita Gabony), who quips: “My nails are longer than my future.” Given how precarious existence currently seems, there’s a chill to that sentiment. Here’s to much brighter days for generation Snapchat, putting a brave face on things by the look of it, and deserving applause.

At the NT April 9. Tickets: 020 3989 5455; nationaltheatre.org.uk. Then at Chichester Festival Theatre (01243 781312), April 22-May 14; cft.org.uk